Summer’s here, and the Supreme Court and some Colorado Republicans are really turning up the hate.
Far-right activist jurists on the court made good last week on their confirmation-hearing promises to drag the nation toward theocracy.
Six justices agreed that it’s fine — just fine — to discriminate against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals — or fill-in-the-blank — as long as the hateful inspiration was heaven sent.
Now hang on. If you’re a closeted homophobe or racist, don’t get too excited yet. There are a few rules that come with this newly created idea of sanctioned gay-bashing. It’s not legal, yet, to walk up to two guys sitting on the same side of the booth and say, “we don’t serve your kind here.”
You absolutely, however, can now freely tell folks that their “money is no good here” — if you can twist the tale enough to make it look like, as a business owner, your free speech rights are being impugned.
The Supreme Court, in taking a make-believe case on as reference, is making the free-speech scheme easy.
That’s right. You get a bye on letting just anyone buy who might be two guys kissing, or speaking Spanish, or totally not being from mothers of the same race, if you play this game right.
The gay-bashing heated up again this week after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 for metro-area website maker Lorie Smith, who owns 303 Creative. The high court’s far-right extremists said that Colorado’s law barring businesses from discriminating against anyone because of their race, gender, or sexual orientation violates Smith’s right to free speech.
The court says that wedding photographers, website makers and invitation printers are artists, and that what they do when taking clip art, bridal registry website links, cheesy quotes from the Bible or Shakespeare and coding for Google Maps, is an expression of artistry and, thus, free speech for pay.
OK.
Actually, Smith says she’s an artist, and so everything she does is art. And art is expression, and that invokes the First Amendment. And that spells “trouble” with a Capital “T,” friends.
And so if other people like Smith don’t like whom you kiss or the color of your skin or how you sound — because the Bible tells them so — their free speech is the ticket to making those people loathed as second-class citizens.
Equal protection under the law is for everyone, except for people who aren’t straight or otherwise defined as “approved” by Smith’s interpretation of the first and new testaments.
This high court revives the debunked and disgraced Plessy vs Ferguson ruling from 1896. That legal mallet was used to brutally justify the “separate but equal” exception allowing for legalized discrimination against Blacks for decades after.
Just like this week, far-right justices argued that the Constitution’s 14th Amendment can’t be invoked by Smith’s gay customers because she says God tells her that women marrying women is icky. Smith’s lawyers say that selecting website clip art for two women is the same thing as having to witness their nuptials, buy a gift and throw rice.
“Plessy” argued that as long as Black people can get equal accommodations from a school that teaches Black children, or a fountain that dribbles for Black drinkers, it’s all constitutionally sound to allow for discrimination.
Taking America back to the past, Justice Neil Gorsuch argues in writing the opinion for the majority that gay couples aren’t being discriminated against, because they can just take their business elsewhere.
You can see where this contorted legal logic is going.
Who are you to argue that the “Art of French Cooking” isn’t actually artistic expression? Wedding caterers and the local diner can easily assert that their inspirational menus and expressive salad du potato are protected by the Supreme Court’s new Jim Crowing ruling.
“Sorry, I was taught to believe that the Curse of Hamm means no sandwich for you, because you’re not white. It’s a blaspheme thing. But there’s a Taco Bell just down the road.”
Don’t think for a second this is a stretch. This is a court that thought decades of courts before them were smoking legal crack on the Roe vs Wade thing. Privacy is what some justices expect when it comes to hiding their lurid vacation graft habits, not a woman’s expectation to control her own body.
Sure, it’s just me and about 70% of the nation that sees this gay-bashing and women’s rights scheme as a negative thing.
The twitterverse was filled with hurrahs from far-right extremist political types from here and afar with the news that some business customers are more equal than others in the United States.
The chairperson of the Colorado Republican Party mass-emailed a hate-meme with the subject line: “Pride is evil.” It came with a huge graphic that pulled the word “demon” from the center of “pridemonth.”
“Ultimately, these LGBTQ+ reprobates want to groom your children and sexually exploit them so they can normalize pedophilia,” Williams wrote. “Enough is enough. The Colorado Republican Party will no longer be silent on this subject.”
I didn’t know Williams and his acolytes had paused their gay-bashing.
He and the super-six on the high court want to turn back the clock to a better time for them, when the founding fathers, like them, decided who in America would have rights, and who wouldn’t.”
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This ruling is too absurd for words.